The self as political issue The tradi­tional self-portrait is now a thing of the past. The customary features of a classic self-portrait are for the most part lacking entirely. The face has now come under suspi­cion. The exhi­bi­tion cata­logue “ME” presents a compre­hen­sive overview of the icon­o­clastic processes to which the genre of the self-portrait is subject today, along with rele­vant subver­sive tech­niques in art, including humor, irony, decen­tral­iza­tion, frag­men­ta­tion, blind­ness, and obstruc­tion. However—or perhaps precisely for that reason—the artist-subject has remained a leit­motif in contem­po­rary art, although it is no longer asso­ci­ated exclu­sively with the image of the artist. The subject is a constantly changing phenom­enon and thus diffi­cult to grasp in a portrait.